sicily

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The upbringing of emperor Frederick II “Stupor Mundi”

This week we will go back 20 years and pick up the other strain of our history of the Hohenstaufen. The last three episodes we focused on events in Germany and the struggle between Philipp of Swabia and Otto IV. Today we take a closer look at the early years of Frederick II, before he came up to Germany and took over.

Little is known but much has been written about the youth of emperor Frederick II, not only because it was exceedingly turbulent, but also because it forged a man who burst on the European stage aged 14 already displaying many of those personality traits that would make him known as the Stupor Mundi, the Astonishment of the World. How did he become who he became?

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 76 – From Urchin to Emperor

This week we will go back 20 years and pick up the other strain of our history of the Hohenstaufen. The last three episodes we focused on events in Germany and the struggle between Philipp of Swabia and Otto IV. Today we take a closer look at the early years of Frederick II, before he came up to Germany and took over.

Little is known but much has been written about the youth of emperor Frederick II, not only because it was exceedingly turbulent, but also because it forged a man who burst on the European stage aged 14 already displaying many of those personality traits that would make him known as the Stupor Mundi, the Astonishment of the World. How did he become who he became?

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Jason, Dave K and Dennis who have already signed up.

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Let us go back to 1194. Emperor Henry VI is still sitting on his throne. Not only that, he had just been crowned king of Sicily the fulfilment of all his ambitions. In that year, on December 26th, the day of St. Stephen, in the city of Jesi was born to him a son, Frederick, by his wife Constance who had been in her fortieth year and barren for so long.

We very rarely know the birthdays of even the most important personalities in the Middle Ages. Birthdays were barely recorded, not just because so many children died. The birthday was not as significant as the day of baptism and in some places the name day which established the connection of the child to the divine or saintly. Frederick is different in that as in many other areas of life. He remembers his birthday and even orders his birthday to be celebrated with great feasts throughout his realm, the first ruler in post Roman times to do so.

Not just that, but there is even a poem written shortly after the birth by Peter of Eboli, a monk and chronicler of the reign of Henry VI. He wrote:

“From Italy came the palm of a triumphal new birth

Having the distinction of a fortunate father

He was brought to life through screams [heard] by those present

The palm tree brought forth its fruit, although delayed.

A son is born to Augustus, a boy who will excel at arms,

Though the father is fortunate, the son will be more so,

This boy will in every way be blessed.”

This is lifted almost word for word from Virgil and ties little Frederick back to the Romans, Aeneas and the city of Troy. As you may remember by now the official Hohenstaufen ideology is that there is only one imperial dynasty that goes back to Troy and has ruled ever since Julius Caesar in an unbroken line that led to this little boy in a crib in the march of Ancona. It even has some messianic connotations that Frederick would rekindle in 1245 when he writes to the citizens of Jesi calling their hometown his Bethlehem where his blessed mother had birthed him.

Peter writes these words sometime between 1195 and 1197, so little does he know about the fate of the blessed boy.

Because these first years are not at all fortunate.

The first image we have of Frederick is again in the book of Peter of Eboli. We see a baby wrapped up tightly, wearing a tiny crown being handed over by his mother to the duchess of Spoleto who will look after him. The duchess and even his mother touch the precious child only with their covered hands. 

Frederick will stay with the family of the duke of Spoleto for the next three years. The duke, Konrad von Urslingen was an aristocrat from Swabia with possessions around the city of Rottweil. Konrad had come to Italy in the train of emperor Barbarossa. Barbarossa had acquired the duchy of Spoleto from his uncle Welf VI and had put Konrad in, first as administrator and a little later as duke. The Urslinger was able to hold on to Spoleto even through the upheaval following the battle of Legnano and the Peace of Venice. When henry VI came through these lands in his attempts to conquer Sicily, Konrad von Urslingen provided significant military help. Konrad and Henry VI became quite close, and he was one of the few people present at the emperor’s deathbed.

Konrad, like most medieval fathers, had very little to do with childrearing. That was largely left to the women and if money was no object, a tutor, usually a monk or bishop. Hence the first person Frederick formed an attachment to was Konrad’s wife, the duchess of Spoleto. About her, pretty much nothing at all is known. Neither a name nor whether she was German or Italian. Hence, we do not know what language he spoke his first words in.

Konrad and his nameless wife had two sons, marginally older than Frederick and a daughter, Adelheid, of roughly the same age. Later in life Frederick will have a mistress called Adelheid from noble Swabian stock who will give birth to Enzo, one of Fr3derick’s most favoured sons and later king of Sardinia and prisoner in Bologna. This may have been the same Adelheid he played with as a toddler.

The next important event in his life that he was probably blissfully unaware of was his election as King of the Romans sometime late 1196 or 1197. At that point he is 2 to 3 years old, but not yet baptised. The delay is explained by his father’s desire to make amends with the pope and one of his offers was to let the pope baptise young Frederick himself.

But that did not happen. In all likelihood Frederick was baptised in nearby Assisi sometime after negotiations with the papacy had broken down. Albert von Stade describes it as a splendid event attended by 15 bishops and the emperor himself. Such a great spectacle would almost certainly have attracted a young man, son of a wealthy cloth merchant in the city with a love of troubadour romances, court life and a burning ambition to become a knight. That young man/boy had been baptised over the same baptismal font in the name of Giovanni. But he would alter change his name to Francis and is known now as St. Francis of Assisi. The emperor and the most significant saint of the 13th century will cross paths many more times.

Baptismal font in the cathedral of Assisi

The time at the castle of Folignano where the dukes of Spoleto lived comes to an abrupt end when Henry VI died in 1197. Constance immediately sends for him to be brought to Palermo. And as we have heard, when Philipp of Swabia arrives in central Italy to pick up his nephew for his coronation in Aachen, the little boy is gone, and the House of Hohenstaufen is thrown into a severe crisis.

Again, nobody mentions anything about how Frederick took the separation from the person he in all likelihood regarded as his mother.

But this will not be the only trauma. When Frederick arrives in Palermo he meets his mother, presumably for the first time since she had left him in the care of the Urslingens three years earlier. Constance is at that point preoccupied with the question of how she can secure the kingdom of Sicily for her son. She de facto gives up the title of king of the Romans on behalf of her son so that he can be crowned king of Sicily with the papal blessing. That stabilised things for the moment. Meanwhile, as we know Philipp had himself elected king of the Romans and had received approval from Constance to be crowned. Sicily and the Empire are now separated.

Shortly after that, on November 27th, 1198, Constance of Sicily dies. Frederick is still only 4 years old and now an orphan. In her testament Constance had appointed Pope Innocent III guardian of young Frederick. Innocent kept entirely aloof from is ward. He would send papal legates to look after him. He felt anxiety for his dangers, praised his progress and expressed unfeigned pleasure at his escape from enemy hands. But he never saw him in all these years until the boy was 17.

There were no family members looking out for little Frederick. The only remaining Hohenstaufen was Philipp, and he was far away in Germany. His mother’s family, the Hautevilles had been decimated or exiled by his father Henry VI and those who returned bore him ill will.

In principle the kingdom was ruled by Frederick’s guardian, pope Innocent III. But Innocent stayed back home in Rome. In practice the kingdom was to be managed by a regency council headed by the chancellor of the kingdom, Walter of Palear. Walter was first and foremost interested in his own and his family’s advancement. But since his power rested on his appointment as regent for little Frederick, he was the closest thing to an ally Frederick had got.

Innocent III

After Constance’s death the kingdom collapsed into chaos. Several factions fought for supremacy and possession of the child king.

There were the Germans who had come to Sicily with Henry VI. Many had been Ministeriales or simple knights and out here in the south had risen to be counts or even attaining princely rank. Their leader was Markward of Annweiler, erstwhile trusted military leader of Henry VI armies and now elevated to Margrave of Ancona. Annweiler saw himself as the representative of Hohenstaufen power in Italy and took orders from Philipp of Swabia.

Walter von Palear (left) and Markward von Annweiler (right)

Opposed to the Germans was the old Norman aristocracy whose position had been curtailed after the fall of Tancred. They saw an opportunity to chuck out the northern invaders and either replace little Frederick with one of their own or to make him their plaything. Their cause got a massive boost when Innocent III pushed the regency council to return the provinces of Tarento and Lecce to Walter of Brienne, son in law of the former king Tancred. That gave this faction a natural focal point. Cleary Innocent III wasn’t looking out for his ward’s interests at all times.

And then we have the Muslim population in central Sicily who raided the lands outside the major cities, whilst the Pisans were enforcing trading privileges on the island, some real, some imagined. And for the barons on the mainland who were neither Norman nor German, their objective was simply a weak central power that allowed them to do as they please.

All these parties had only one thing in common: to pursue their own most obvious advantage, and to enrich themselves at the expense of the helpless king, who thus became the focus of all their activities. The goal, above all others, was to get possession of the King’s person, for this child represented the legal basis of the victor’s de facto power. Frederick became “a lamb amongst ravenous wolves” as the chronicler put it.

There is one story about Frederick when he was 7 years old. In 1201 Markward of Annweiler had overpowered Walter of Palear and had entered Palermo. He and his men searched for their quarry, the boy king who they found in some back room of the Castello a Mare. Frederick tried to fight them but when he realised the futility of his actions, he threw away his royal garments and began scratching himself with his nails in his impotent rage. The papal legate who informs the pope of these events concludes that it was “a worthy omen for the future ruler who cannot be false to his own nobility, who with royal instinct feels himself, like Mount Sinai, outraged by the touch of a beast of prey.”

The question arises how a child could grow up in such circumstances and become a commensurate ruler, an accomplished diplomat and skilled administrator with enormous appetites for life, love and above all knowledge. The story I grew up with is probably best told in the words of Ernst Kantorowicz whose biography of Frederick II we will encounter several times on our journey and which itself and its author’s life are worth a whole episode. Here is what he had to say about Frederick’s childhood:

Ernst Kantorowicz

Quote:

“From this time forward (he means after the coup by Markward of Annweiler) no one in the fortress seems to have bothered his head about the boy. The royal property had been so shockingly squandered that the child was often literally in want of the barest necessaries till the compassionate citizens of Palermo took pity on him and found him food. One fed him for a week, another for a month, each according to his circumstances.

He was a handsome boy whose clear bright glance already caused remark, and the people were probably glad to see him amongst them. At eight and nine years old the young King wandered about without let or hindrance and strolled unchecked through the narrow streets and markets and gardens of the semi- African capital at the foot of the Pellegrino. An amazing variety of peoples, religions and customs jostled each other before his eyes: mosques with their minarets, synagogues with their cupolas stood cheek by jowl with Norman churches and cathedrals, which again had been adorned by Byzantine masters with gold mosaics, their rafters supported by Greek columns on which Saracen craftsmen had carved in Kufic script the name of Allah. Round the town lay the pleasure palaces and fountains of Norman Kings in the exotic gardens and animal preserves of the Conca d’Oro, the delights of which had inspired the Arab poets. In the marketplaces the people went about their business in many-coloured confusion: Normans and Italians, Saracens, Jews and Greeks. The lively boy was driven back on all these for company and soon learned the customs and the speech of all these tribes and races. Did any wise Imam play the part of Chiron to the lonely child? Did some unknown tutor teach the future ruler of men to observe, to know, to use, the forces of Earth and Nature? We do not know. We are certain only that his education was unique and radically different from any that ever fell to the lot of a royal child. Later, men marvelled at his knowledge of the habits of man and beast and plant as profoundly as they trembled at his actual approach.

Frederick was not brought up, as his father for instance had been, by a learned chaplain of the type of Godfrey of Viterbo, nor reared like many another prince by world-shy monks in the seclusion of a cloister. Amazed by his comprehensive knowledge, his astounding exotic erudition, men have sought diligently: to trace the real teacher of this great Hohenstaufen — research has not revealed his Aristotle. And with reason.

The teacher never existed whom he would not have surpassed and disillusioned, and the school of a mere fencing-master would not long have satisfied him.  Frederick II is a typically self-taught man: he had no one to thank for his education: what he was, he was sud virtute. Quite possibly he learnt the elements from that Magister William Franciscus who has once been mentioned in attendance on him as a seven-year-old child and is on record as still with him in 1208. Quite possibly one or another of the papal legates may have taken an interest in him and taught him the necessary amount of Scripture.  Quite possibly he received irregular instruction now and then in other things, but he never enjoyed a systematic education.  His later learning bears all the marks of being not the product of ” school” but of life itself. He was compelled from his tenderest years to absorb directly, without extraneous aid and from every source, the strength he needed. This differentiated his knowledge both in its content and in its application from that of his contemporaries.  Stern Necessity was his first tutor, and she — to quote the Pope’s expression — ” taught him the eloquence of grief and of complaint at an age when other children scarcely lisp aright.”  His next instructors were the marketplaces and streets of Palermo: Life itself. He laid the foundations of his wisdom in those wanderings which made him the friend of every man. (end quote)

This idea of young Frederick running wild through the streets of Palermo, a city second only to Constantinople when it comes to the mingling of cultures, is now sharply dismissed by modern historians. There are no real contemporaneous accounts of such activities and the citations used to confirm it have been written 70 and 100 years later. But most importantly, there is no way whoever was in control of Palermo at any given point would let Frederick II run free. To large is the risk he could be kidnapped by a rival in this endless civil war and used to prop up another rickety regime.

I hear all this, and it sort of makes sense. But then I look at teenagers and angry teenagers in particular. They can be so godawfully stubborn. And that is leverage in itself. Walter, or Markward or whoever just controlled Palermo needed Frederick to occasionally parade through town and perform some ceremonial function. And if they wanted for that to go smoothly, they needed to give Frederick some leeway. He may not be running around town all on his own, but he could have demanded his bodyguards to keep a distance whilst he is discovering all there is to see in the Conca d-Oro, the bay of Palermo.

In 1208, at the age of 14 Frederick receives the Schwertleite, which means he is now considered an adult and expected to gradually transition to independent personal rule. He is an accomplished politician well beyond his years. He has his grandfather Barbarossa’s inexhaustible energy and ability to charm people over to his side. And from his other grandfather, Roger II he inherited intellectual rigour and administrative skills. And he has this unquenchable curiosity to find out how the world works, the desire for new experiences, for adventures and for sexual pleasure, something entirely of his own. Can you believe that this man had been locked up in a castle with a dour monk as tutor for all his early adolescence? I can’t and that is why I stick to the romantic image of a future emperor roaming the streets of the Sicilian capital like an urchin.

What happened next, we already discussed last episode. If you haven’t, I strongly recommend you do check out Episode 75 – Wet Pants and other Miracles.

For those of you who do not have the time or inclination, here is the 60 second rundown.

In 1208 king Philipp of Swabia is murdered which brings his opponent Otto IV to the throne. Otto did enjoy papal support but makes the fatal mistake to go after Sicily in 1211. The papacy is utterly terrified by the idea of being surrounded by imperial territories, by Lombardy and Tuscany in the north and the Kingdom of Sicily that includes the southern Italian Mainland. Hence Innocent III withdraws support from Otto IV and encourages the German princes to elect Frederick II to become Emperor. That is when Otto IV makes his second mistake. His army is down in Messina and if he had crossed over to the island, Palermo had fallen, and he would have had his rival in custody. But he panicked and ran back home – all that also involves a dream about a bear. As I said, listen to episode 75, much better than this rushed story.

Anyway, Frederick II realises that he has to go to Germany and take the crown because whoever will be emperor in the future will try to take Sicily from him. He sets off, nearly dies a couple of times and then, in the nick of time, enters the city of Constance which gives him the much-needed foothold north of the Alps. The civil war resumes pretty much where Philipp and Otto had left off. That war ends with a battle Frederick is not involved in at all, the battle of Bouvines.

Bouvines was a battle between king Philippe Auguste of France against the Eking John Lackland. Otto IV was reliant on English support. King John had asked him to gather an army and, together with English forces – defeat the French monarch. The battle ends with a rout of Otto’s troops which triggers a set of events that reshape the face of Europe. Not only does Frederick II become the undisputed king of the Romans and subsequently emperor, but the French Monarchy enters its great expansionist phase that will see them becoming the dominant power in Europe, and most importantly, it leads almost directly to the barons’ rebellion and the signing of Magna Carta.

There you go, Frederick II is emperor. How he reigns, in particular how he approaches the politics in Germany will be subject to the next episode. I hope you will be joining us again. Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for matrasses or as I recently heard energy supplements and pension plans. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.

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Emperor Henry VI takes over

When Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph in 1190 the crown transfers to his eldest surviving son, Henry, known to History as Henry VI.

This is the first time since the accession to personal rule of Emperor Henry III in 1039 that the imperial crown moves from father to grown up son without a glitch. In the previous 150 years, the passing of an emperor had been a dramatic event where all the cards were dealt anew. Just remember, Henry IV came to the throne as a child, Henry V by rebellion against his father, Lother III wasn’t in any meaningful way related to the imperial family, Konrad III came in by a coup against the named heir, as did Barbarossa. The French meanwhile had five transitions from father to son, with only one 6-year regency.   This consistency in reproduction is one of the key reasons the Capetion dynasty was so much more successful than their German counterparts, though the greatest of the Capetions has only just appeared, Phillipp II Augustus (1180 to 1223). More, and a lot more about him later.

Talking about famous protagonists, the other contemporary of Henry VI is of course Richard the Lionheart (1189 to 1199). Of him we will hear even more.

But today’s episode is mainly about the lay of the land and the first attempt to achieve the main aim of his reign, control of the kingdom of Sicily.

History of the Germans
History of the Germans

A narrative history of the German people from the Middle Ages to Reunification in 1991. Episodes are 25-35 min long and drop on Thursday mornings.
“A great many things keep happening, some good, some bad”. Gregory of Tours (539-594)

HotGPod is now entering its 9th season. So far we have covered:

Ottonian Emperors (# 1- 21)
– Henry the Fowler (#1)
– Otto I (#2-8)
– Otto II (#9-11)
– Otto II (#11-14)
– Henry II (#15-17)
– Germany in 1000 (#18-21)

Salian Emperors(#22-42)
– Konrad II (#22- 25)
– Henry III (#26-29)
– Henry IV/Canossa (#30-39)
– Henry V (#40-42)
– Concordat of Worms (#42)

Early Hohenstaufen (#43-69)
– Lothar III (#43-46)
– Konrad III (#47-49)
– Frederick Barbarossa (#50-69)

Late Hohenstaufen (#70-94)
– Henry VI (#70-72)
– Philipp of Swabia (#73-74)
– Otto IV (#74-75)
– Frederick II (#75-90)
– Epilogue (#91-94)

Eastern Expansion (#95-108)

The Hanseatic League (#109-127)

The Teutonic Knights (#128-137)

The Interregnum and the early Habsburgs (#138 ff
– Rudolf von Habsburg (#139-141)
– Adolf von Nassau (#142)
– Albrecht von Habsburg (#143)
– Heinrich VII (#144-148)
– Ludwig the Bavarian (#149-153)
– Karl IV (#154-163)
The Reformation before the Reformation
– Wenceslaus the Lazy (#165)
– The Western Schism (#166/167)
– The Ottomans (#168)
– Sigismund (#169-#184
The Empire in the 15th Century
– Mainz & Hessen #186
– Printing #187-#188
– Universities #190
– Wittelsbachs #189, #196-#199
– Baden, Wuerrtemberg, Augsburg, Fugger (#191-195)
– Maps & Arms (#201-#202)
The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg
– Early habsburgs (#203-#207)
– Albrecht II (#208)
-Freidrich III (#209-

Ep. 70: Henry VI (1189-1197) – Conquest of Sicily – From Father to Son
byDirk Hoffmann-Becking
Ep. 70: Henry VI (1189-1197) – Conquest of Sicily – From Father to Son

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 70 – From Father to Son

I know, I know, you were expecting another Germany in 1200 episode, talking about feudalism and chivalric culture. And that was really the episode I wanted to produce. But as it happened, Clio, the muse of history refused to kiss me, an event much reminiscent of my teenage years.

I probably read too many books and articles on feudalism which left me utterly confused with nothing interesting to say. I would never dare to say that this debate, on which so many eminent historians have voiced an opinion is nothing but a wild goose chase. I have someone to do that for me. If you want to hear a straightforward perspective on what feudalism was, check out lecture 5 of the High Middle Ages course on the Great Courses Plus. Philip Daileader does a much better job of it than I could do.

Which means we can resume our narrative again! Hurrah!

When Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph in 1190 the crown transfers to his eldest surviving son, Henry, known to History as Henry VI.

This is the first time since the accession to personal rule of Emperor Henry III in 1039 that the imperial crown moves from father to grown up son without a glitch. In the previous 150 years, the passing of an emperor had been a dramatic event where all the cards were dealt anew. Just remember, Henry IV came to the throne as a child, Henry V by rebellion against his father, Lother III wasn’t in any meaningful way related to the imperial family, Konrad III came in by a coup against the named heir, as did Barbarossa. The French meanwhile had five transitions from father to son, with only one 6-year regency.   This consistency in reproduction is one of the key reasons the Capetion dynasty was so much more successful than their German counterparts, though the greatest of the Capetions has only just appeared, Phillipp II Augustus (1180 to 1223). More, and a lot more about him later.

Talking about famous protagonists, the other contemporary of Henry VI is of course Richard the Lionheart (1189 to 1199). Of him we will hear even more.

But today’s episode is mainly about the lay of the land and the first attempt to achieve the main aim of his reign, control of the kingdom of Sicily.

Before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Tomas, Dennis and Christoph who have already signed up.

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Henry VI was born probably in November 1165 as the second son of Frederick Barbarossa and his wife Beatrice of Burgundy. His elder brother died very young and may have had some disability that rendered him unsuited to kingship in the customs of the time. Henry hence grew up as the heir to the throne.

As so often with medieval figures we have little concrete information about his life before he had turned 18. It is likely he received an education to prepare him for the imperial role. That meant he would not just learn how to fight, hunt and drink as his father had, but also in Latin, maybe a smattering of theology and mathematics and obviously reading and writing.

Henry VI did have a passion for the Minnesang, the art of the troubadours who sang about courtly love. The famous Manesse Liederhandschrift, a compilation of medieval love poetry from the late 13th century contains a poem by Henry VI. The poem is a bit so, so and some argue it wasn’t even by him, but it does a reasonable job of conveying the longing for the beloved who he would gladly sacrifice all his crowns and castles for. As we will see, he was not serious about that one.

We hear that his court was a bit jollier than his predecessors’ with travelling Minnesingers, troubadours, musicians and even a fool.  He was very sociable, generous to his friends and enjoyed intelligent conversation. Physically he was less impressive than Barbarossa, skinny and not very tall.

And what was crucial, he had been nurtured for his future role by his father. Since he was 9 years old he followed his father on his journeys to Italy and from place to place in Germany. In 1083, barely 19, he takes part in the complex negotiations that leads to the settlement between Barbarossa and the Lombard Leage.

In 1184 he makes his first appearance in the history books. The Diet of Pentecost in Mainz was the great event where Barbarossa and the Hohenstaufen clan celebrated its recovery from the setbacks and humiliation of the 1170s. Officially it was the to celebrate the knighting of Henry and his younger brother Frederick, Duke of Swabia.

Once Henry had become a knight and was thereby now a full member of the social elite, he took on major responsibilities. He headed a campaign against duke Casimir of Poland in Summer 1184 that concluded with Casimir giving homage to Henry and his father.

It is also in 1184 that an agreement was concluded the results of which will dominate the reign of Henry VI. Barbarossa had agreed with King William II of Sicily, nicknamed “the Good” that Henry would marry his aunt, Constance. Constance was at that point already 30 years old whilst the intended bridegroom was just 19.

Constance was the youngest daughter of King Roger II of Sicily and at that point the only legitimate member of the once so fecund Hauteville family. Her nephew, the current king of Sicily was 32 at the time and by all accounts should still be in with a chance of producing an heir.

But as long as William remained childless, she was the last remaining Hauteville.

We have come across the Kingdom of Sicily quite a few times now, so we do not have to go over the full backstory again. Basically, the Hautevilles had shown up in Southern Italy as mercenaries from the 1030s onwards and had rolled up the Lombard princes, the Byzantines and ultimately the Muslim Emirs of Sicily. In 1130 Roger II had consolidated all of Southern Italy and Sicily in his hand and acquired a royal title from the pope.

The kingdom of Sicily was, at least in the eyes of the Norans and the Popes a fief of the papacy. But as far as fiefs go, the Normans enjoyed a large amount of freedom. They controlled the church in their territory, including the right to select and invest bishops. Their fief could be inherited not just by the sons, but also by daughters and cadet branches. All that had been laid down in a Concordat the papacy had concluded with King Wilhelm I in 1156.

Hence Constance was the true and sole heir of the KIngdom of Sicily.

Which gets you to the point that is really hard to get your head around. A marriage between the heir of the imperial crown and the heir to the crown of Sicily is the very, very last thing the papacy could tolerate, let alone sponsor.

Now that the empire had found a way to collaborate with the Northern Italian cities that gave it a modicum of executive power, acquiring Sicily would put the pope into the chokehold of the emperor. If the empire and Sicily were one political block, the emperor could come down and besiege Italy at will. He could even do that without having to rely in his German knights. Sicily and its wealth was more than enough to muster an army that could march on Rome.

Ever since the Normans appeared they had been a key element of Papal political strategy. One of the reasons Pope Gregory VII could stand up to Emperor Henry IV was down to his alliance with Robert Guiscard. In Rome, the Sicilians and the Empire were roughly equally strong. The Empire may have the ability to muster larger armies, but these could not be kept in Italy for very long, whilst the Sicilians may have less manpower but were closer.

The popes who did not want to swap imperial overlordship with Norman control, played both sides against each other, sometimes involving peripheral powers like the emperor Manuel in Constantinople or the great maritime republic of Venice, Pisa and Genua.

A long as the popes were able to keep the empire and the Normans apart, they were free to pursue their policy of making the seat of Saint Peter the most powerful throne in Europe. And that meant in reverse, if the Normans and the Empire come together, the popes will be demoted to nothing but bishops of Rome.

So how could this engagement and then marriage come about? The pope in 1184 was Lucius III. He was much less of a man than his predecessor Alexander III. He could not reside in Rome where the senate still ruled. And he could not even take over one to the smaller cities in the Papal states, like Terracina or Agnani as some of his predecessors had. Being essentially expelled from his property he lived of the courtesy of the citizens of Verona. Not only his temporal situation was stretched, he also struggled to maintain control of the spiritual framework. As we saw last episode, heretic, anticlerical ideas spread around the growing cities, posing a direct challenge to the authority of the church. Lucius III needed help from secular rulers to confront this fundamental threat. Concerns about the deterioration of the situation in the crusader states may have also played a role.

But all that still cannot explain why the pope did not intervene to stop the engagement. It seems that Alexander III had even proactively supported a rapprochement between Sicily and the empire.

That leaves only one last reason. The great force of history known as cockup. WHatever Lucius III thought about this marriage, it wasn’t the correct assesment.

The actual marriage took place in 1186 in Milan. By now the new pope, Urban III could only look on and grind his teeth. But he could no longer stop the proceeding, setting a train of events in motion that will dominate the history of the empire for more than 50 years.

But let’s go back to Henry’s carreer.in the last years of Barbarossa, Henry became his right hand man. He was involved in the excalating conflict with pope Urban III. In 1186 and 1187 he took charge of Italian affairs including a campaign against the papal lands.

The conflict with the papacy ended when news arrived of the fall of Jerusalem and the popes now needed support from all temporal lords, including the Hohenstaufen. In preparation of the crusade the Reich needed to be secured. And that meant ending the ongoing feud between archbishop Phillip of Cologne and the emperor and to neutralise Henry the Lion.

Henry VI was involved in both efforts, in particular his diplomatic skill helped finding an arrangement with the former imperial chancellor.

As for Henry the Lion, you may remeber that he volunteered to go into exile with his father in Law, Henry II, king of England.

When Barbarossa set out from Regensburg in Mai 1189 to go to his watery grave in the middle of Anatolia, Henry VI took over the affairs of the empire.  As I said before, such a smooth transition to a tried and tested new monarch is exceedingly rare in German history.

His father had barely made it to the Hungarian border before events in London and Palermo put events in motion that will lead, amongst other things, to King Richard the Lionheart being imprisoned on the castle of Trifels.

To understand these events, we need to take a quick look at the main riders and runners in Western Europe in 1190.

Up until now our history was fairly linear. As far as the empire was concerned, the significant players were the papacy, the princes and the powers on the Italian peninsula, i.e., the cities and the Normans. By 1190 the two new powers, France and England can no longer be ignored.

The King of France, Phillippe Auguste was an incredibly tenacious, ruthless and competent ruler who tripled, if not quadrupled the lands directly under royal control during his 43 year reign. We are still at the start of this process and he has not yet acquired Normandy or the County of Toulouse, but he is already shaping up to be the dominant figure in European History of the time.

The king of France’s main interest was dynastic. His objective was to wrestle as many counties and duchies from his great magnates as possible. And the greatest of his magnates was Henry II, King of England. Henry II controlled all of France west of Paris. And that was a lot more than half the Kingdom of France in 1190 given large parts of East and Southeast France were part of the Empire. For Phillippe Auguste this means he has to use absolutely every trick in the book to get ahead. Religious fanaticism, emerging nationalist feeling, bribery, kidnapping, anything goes. And if anything goes, involving the empire in the grand schemes becomes part of the plan, as we will see.

His opponents, Henry II and his brood are no sissies either. they fight back along the same lines. They too will now involve the empire in their schemes which means taking an increasingly active role in German politics.

Barbarossa could still largely ignore the Kings of France and England. All he tried to get from them was recognition of his antipopes, but not a lot more. But for his son, that is no longer the case. The conflict between France and England will last effectively 200 plus years and becomes the vortex into which a bg chunk of European history gets sucked in.

Henry VI’s chessboard has a lot more pieces than his dad, and three of them now fall over in quick successin.

In June 1189 the wife of Henry the Lion, Matilda dies and a week later her father, KIng Henry II of England. For Henry the Lion, exiled former duke of Saxony and Bavaria, this is a problem. Though his family is well regarded at court in England and his sons are close to the new King, Richard the Lionheart, hehimself does not have a role.

Richard is also now preparing for the Third Crusade which Henry the Lion cannot join, since he had just refused Barbarossa’s offer to come along instead of exile. Going to the Holy Land with the King of England would be a unforgiveable insult to his liege lord. He could not go and he could not stay, so he went for the third option, he returned back home to Brunswick.

That was a explicit breach of the oath he had given Barbarossa not to return for three years, i.e., not before 1192. His return created a major domestic crisis for the young emperor Hnery VI, which got worse as Henry the Lion returned to his favourit passtime, capturing his neighbours lands and castles. within a short period of time he had not just regained his old possessions but expanded them significantly.

In October 1189, mere weeks after the Lion’s return Henry VI convened an assembly, condemned Henry the Lion as an enemy of the Empire, banned him and rised an imperial army to subdue him. This army marched into Welf territory but did not get very far as winter fell.

In these December days, the next piece of news arrived that would dominate the young emperor’s life. King William II of Sicily had died unexpectedly at the age of 32.

Constance was the heir to the Norman kingdom!

Well, yes, on paper she was. All the barons of Sicily had sworn an oath to recognise her asqueen should WIlliam II die without offspring. The concordat of 1156 clearly states that the kingdom would be inherited by whoever is the closest legitimate offspring, male of female.

But politically, this was an impossiblity. The new Pope, Clement III, could not tolerate that. Clement III, despite his ill health was a more proactive pope. He managed to return the papacy to the Holy City by settling the constant conflict with the senate of the city. He was also the main organiser of the third crusade where he achieved the near impossible, a truce between Richard the Lionheart and Phillippe Auguste, so both could leave to recapture Jerusalem.

Given the legal situation, pope Clement III had only one option, do something illegal. There was still a branch of the Hauteville family left. Tancred, Count of Lecce was the illegitimate son of Roger of Apulia, a son of King Roger II. As an illegitimate son, he was excluded from the succession, but that did not stop Pope Clement III. Nor did it stop the Sicilian nobles who had sworn allegiance to Constance just 5 years earlier. So they eleveated Tancred to be King of Sicily and he was crowned early in 1190, even before the news had reached Henry VI that his father-in-law had died.

Tancred and his sons Roger and William

I do not believe in a model of history where there are forks in the road that set the train of history invariably down a particular path. But there are moments that put a spotlight on some of the fundamental choices that gradually shift events in a particular direction.

This is one of them. Henry VI has two options in early 1190. He could pursue imperial justice against Henry the Lion who had broken his oath and the crusader peace. Alternatively he could agree a hasty truce with the Welf and mount a military campaign to gain his wife’s inheritance. It is a choice between the interests of the empire and the dynastic interests of the House of Hohenstaufen.

Barbarossa had made his big u-turn in 1167 when he replaced imperial ambition with dynastic ambition. It is a sign of how embedded this political shift had already become that Hnery VI did not hesitate even for a second. Siciliy was what he wanted and let the Saxons sort out their ssues as they want it.

Henry VI signs an agreement with Henry the Lion that is extremely favourable to the Welf. The only commitment was that the two oldest sons of the Lion, Lothar and another Henry were to join the campaign against SIcily. Lothar dies soon afterwards so that only Henry the Welf joins the campaign.

And it is a great campaign. As Barbrossa had now died, Henry had formally become king, making this his first Italian campaign. As a first campaign almost all vassals of the empire were obliged to provide military suppot to the new king’s journey.

The army started to go down to Northern Italy in summer and autumn of 1190. Henry VI followed in the winter. In spring the great host starts moving towards Sicily.

Between Northern Italy and Sicily lies – the Holy City. And it is in Rome where the Pope now resides again and Henry is still only King of the Romans. We are still missing the imperial coronation. And that takes place on April 15th, 1191.

Hang on, what do you say? The pope who was proactively thwarting Henry’s claim on the Sicilian crown was offering an imperial coronation? How does this work.

Good question. I too am confused.

There are a number of things that happened around the same time that could explain it. First up, PopeClement III, the one who had engineered Tancred’s accession had died literally weeks before Hnery VI arrived in Rome. A new pope, Colestin III was duly elected, but as so often with these elections, he needed a moment to bed things down.

Secondly, the popes were in Rome only by the consent of the Senate of Rome. If the pope refused an imperial coronation he would have had to withstand an imperial siege. AN dthat would only work if teh Senate was prepared to go along.

Now the Senate made his own deal with the aspiring Caesar. They were keen on the destruction of the ancient city of Tusculum. Tusculum had been occupied by Imperial troops since 1187 and was a loyal city of the empire. But the Senate wanted it in exchange for a smooth coroantion.

There was nothing to it. Henry VI offered the Senate of Rome the city of Tuscuum on a silver platter. Tusculum fell, its citizens blinded, killed or exiled and its defences razed to the ground. Tusculum founded by Telegonos, the son of Odysseus and Circe, Tusculum that predates the city of Rome itslef and had been its rival since the time of the kings, was no longer. For 900 years it was grazed by goats and today is an archaeological park. Tusculum was the price Henry VI was prepared to pay for an imperial crown.

And so Pope Colestin III crowned Henry and Constance emperor and empress on April 15th, 1191, a day after his own consecration and ordination as a priest.

Immediately after the coronation the army left for the kingdom of Sicily. Pope Coelestin, his hand still wet from anointing the new emperor, protested. He warned that god, or more precisely the interests of the Roman Curia were opposed to the Norman kingdom falling into the hands of the emperor.

Henry and Constance shrugged off these papal objections and simply pointed to their undeniable right as heir of William II.

The army moved towards the border with Apulia. Citoes quickly fell to henry and Constance. Rocc D’arca, Capua, Salerno. Only when they arrived before Naples did they encounter resistance.

Richard of Acerra, the brother in law of Tancred commanded the city’s defences. Naples history goes back ll the way to the 2nd century BC as an early Greek colony. In the 9th century it had become a largely independent duchy that lasted until 1139 when King Roger II incorporated it into his new Sicilian Kingdom. WIth a population of 30,000 it was the second city of the kingdom surpassed only by Palermo.

Its position at the centre of the bay of Naples and its densive walls made a siege entirely depenent upon being able to prevent any resupply by sea. For that purpose Emperor Henry VI had engaged the ever loyal Pisans and Genoese. The Pisan fleet had arrived in May with the land troops and soldiers began running up against the walls, miners were digging tunnels to bring about the collapse of the walls and siege engineers put together terrifying siege engines.

All looks good, though time is of the essence as always in Italy. But it wasn’t time that ran out, but searoom.

One day the fleet of Tancred’s admiral, Margarito shows up in the bay. Margarito, like Tancred himself was a soldier and sailor forged in incessant campaigns against Byzantium, North African emirs, Venice and pretty much anyone else in the Mediterranean. We know little about how the actual seabattle evolved, but in the end the Pisan ships are on the bottom of the sea, the Pisan sailors loccked up in Castelloamare, the castle in the sea before Naples and supply routes into the city are open again.

Henry did not give up though. There was still a Genoese fleet on its way. The Genoese had been delayed for whatever reason, which may have included unwillingness to fight side by side with the Pisans. Both Pisa and Genua had been offered generous trade privileges in Sicily for their support, not an ideal system to ensure cooperation between the two maritime powers.

Whilst Henry is counting down the days until the Genoese arrive, Italy’s greatest and almost undefeated weapon arrives, the summer. and with summer comes disease and death for the Germans. Will they ever learn? Sell in may, go away as we bankers used to say.

It is a rerun on 1167, with a doube twist though. Like in 1167, soldiers and magnates die in droves. It is again the archbishop of Cologne who bites the dust, that is the same archbishop Philipp who so hugely benefitted from the fall of Henry the Lion. The obligatory duke of Bohemia is also on the list and so are many more.

But what we did not see in 1167 were defections. But that is exactly what happened. The younger Henry, son and heir of Henry the Lion went across the ine and joined the defenders of Naples. Such a blatent change of sides, in particular in a foreign war was pretty much unprecedented and further alienated the Welf and Hohenstaufen clans, undoing all the reconciliation work Barbarossa had done in the years post 1152.

But the final blow came from Salerno. As the siege had bedded down, Constance had moved to the nearby city of Salerno to await the outcome. As disiease took hold of the camp outside Naples and the siege was liften, the citizens of Salerno and their archbishop panicked. They had opened the gates to Henry and Constance without the slightest bit of resistance. They had welcome the empress in an effort to ingratiate themselves with the new rulers and maybe get some priveleges or even royal protection.

Now that Henry’s army was defeated Tancred would be back and he will take revenge on the treasonous citizens of Salerno. It did not matter that other cities had opened their gates as well. Salerno had stuck its neck out further than the rest and that means it would be cut off.

In their distress they did the only thing that would rescue them from certain destruction. They arrested the empress Constance and delivered her as a prisoner to King Tancred in Palermo.  

Henry, who had picked up the disease himself was lying on his sickbed at the monastery of Montecassino when he heard about his wife’s arrest. All seems lost. But it was not.

Henry VI recovered and returned to Germany. En route he meets King Philippe Auguste of France. As the two men swapped stories, talk began about a short stop Phillippe Auguste and Richard the Lionheart had made in Messina.

There the two kings had met the usurper King Tancred. Whilt Phillippe Auguste kept his distance, Richard the Lionheart pushed the “hey we are both Normans” card. Tancred was not quite as excited about his long lost cousin, but after the Lionheart’s soldiers had sacked messina he started seeing the family resemblance. Tancred and Richard made a deal whereby Richard recognised Tancred as legitimate king of Sicily and promised him support in case of an attack. In return, Tancred gave him a busload of cash, officially a refund of the dowry of Richard’s sister who had married William II and a contribution to the crusdae, but in reality, just money into Richard’s pocket. And Tancred promise dto make Rihard’s younger brother Arthur of Brittany the heir to the kingdom.

How much this alliance was worth to Tancred is surely in doubt, but from Henry’s perspective this English king seems to be behind all the things that had gone wrong so far. He had supported Henry the Lion’s return to Brunswick, he supported Tancred of Hauteville and he may have indirectly encouraged the unimaginable defection of an imperial prince. All of that was not only politically irritating, but also a breach of imperial law. Henry VI hence declared Richard the Lionheart an enemy of the empire. And Richard will soon appear inside the empire, more specifically in the lands of Leopold of Austria, a man Richard had insulted during his stint in the Holy Land. Leopold was not the only one he insulted, but the only one whose lands he decided to cross on his way home.

How this will pan out you may know already, but what Henry VI does with the money, you may not. We will see about that next time. As I am still on holiday, I know, its rude, timing for the next episode may again be a bit later than usual. Apologies for that.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to start with me endorsing mattresses or meal kits. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.   

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Otto II’s fateful journey to Southern Italy

After last weeks more descriptive episode this week we have an action-packed 25 minutes for you to enjoy. To get you back in the picture, we are in the year 977 and Otto II, together with two more Ottos has just put down the rebellion of the three Henries. Though the rebellion was challenging, Otto II seemed to have remained in control of the situation throughout. Some disaffected nobles had joined Henry’s banner but the major dukes, counts and bishops have remained loyal. But that lack of jeopardy will also be a weakness in Otto IIs reign. Without the sign of divine favour that was so obviously bestowed upon Otto the Great in Birten and Andernach, Otto II’s PR was not much better after the rebellion than before. The harsh treatment of Henry and his co-conspirators was a long way off the medieval ideal of the merciful ruler. Resentment continued which narrowed his room to manoeuvre.

Hello and welcome to the History of the German People – Episode 10 – The Misfortunes one can endure…

After last weeks more descriptive episode this week we have an action-packed 25 minutes for you to enjoy. To get you back in the picture, we are in the year 977 and Otto II, together with two more Ottos has just put down the rebellion of the three Henries. Though the rebellion was challenging, Otto II seemed to have remained in control of the situation throughout. Some disaffected nobles had joined Henry’s banner but the major dukes, counts and bishops have remained loyal. But that lack of jeopardy will also be a weakness in Otto IIs reign. Without the sign of divine favour that was so obviously bestowed upon Otto the Great in Birten and Andernach, Otto II’s PR was not much better after the rebellion than before. The harsh treatment of Henry and his co-conspirators was a long way off the medieval ideal of the merciful ruler. Resentment continued which narrowed his room to manoeuvre.

As Otto IIs family is quite small, it is crucial that he keeps them in strong positions dotted around the realm and aligned with his political objectives. One of the most important family members is his mother, Adelheid. Adelheid was a significant political player in her own right. During the reign of her husband, she was regularly referred to as the co-ruler of the empire. She had a particularly important role in Italy, where she had been queen before her husband had intervened. The Italian magnates saw her as the main reference point within the Ottonian family and she generously sponsored certain families, including the counts of Canossa, who became one of the most powerful families in Italy. She was also the sister of the King of Burgundy and the mother-in-law of the King of France. Her daughter Emma from her first marriage had married king Lothar of France. And let us not dismiss the fact that she had been involved in top level European politics since she was 15 and now, in her 45th year was a treasure trove of experience and knowledge crucial to the success of Otto IIs reign. In his first years as emperor, Adelheid was constantly by his side, providing advice and support. And he knew that falling out with his mother was something he could not afford. But he managed.

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Events in Lothringia brought their relationship to the brink. Lothringia had forever been a difficult to run territory as the French kings remained of the view that it should be part of their kingdom. That gave the Lothringian nobles a permanent option to reject orders from the Ottonian rulers by threatening to shift allegiance to the French king. As long as Otto’s uncle Brun had been archbishop of Cologne and duke of Lothringia at the same time, the duchy was fairly stable. Brun passed away in 962 and subsequently the duchy was divided into two, Upper and Lower Lothringia, held by local senior aristocratic families. These families stayed loyal to Otto the Great, but when the old emperor died, the ancient quarrels re-emerged.

By 977 one of these, the duchy of Lower Lothringia had become vacant. That duchy was huge sway of land, comprising today’s Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and the bits of Germany on the western shore of the Rhine including the important cities of Cologne and Aachen. As we highlighted before, the Ottonians no longer confiscated vacant duchies for themselves or their families but gave them to members of the powerful families as a way to avoid large scale rebellions.

In the case of Lower Lothringia, Otto IIs choice of new duke was unusual. He chose his cousin Charles to be the new duke. Charles was not just Otto’s cousin, but much more importantly, he was the brother of Lothar, king of France. That was a very odd choice for a number of reasons:

  • Firstly, Charles was blatantly not a powerful German noble with a large family Otto had to placate, his links were in France.
  • Secondly, Charles had fallen out with his brother Lothar over the honour of Queen Emma, Lothar’s wife. Charles had accused Emma of adultery with bishop Adalbero of Laon[1]. Lothar sided with his wife and threw Charles out.
  • Thirdly Charles only 2 years earlier had fought Otto II together with some Lothringian nobles who had forever been opposed to the Ottonians

If we net all this out, I find very little usefulness in appointing Charles as duke of such an important duchy. He brings no support from any German clan. He brings no French support either, au contraire, his appointment invites war with France.

But the most crucial thing is that Adelheid is Emma’s mother, and she did not take kindly to Charles besmirching the honour of her daughter. Sorry, besmirching of honour sounds is a bit too benign. What it really meant is that had Emma been found guilty of adultery, she would have been lucky to get away with permanent incarceration in a monastery.

Adelheid was now snubbed twice. First her protégé Henry the Quarrelsome had been mistreated. But now her daughter and her son-in-law’s arch enemy gets promoted for what seemed no reason, other than to demean her. And off she went to stay with her brother in Burgundy[2].

Otto II had now lost one of his most important councillors. As it happened, he did not have a lot of them. What alienated people even more was that his few councillors were mostly people of modest backgrounds who had made their careers in the church. As we said before, personal interaction with the emperor is crucially important to the nobles. It gives them access to justice and opportunities for advancement and reward. And let us not forget, these guys have vassals of their own so they need to appear to them as if they had access to the 31st floor. Otto’s strategy of relying on people with limited or no connections takes away their entry badge.

Apart from these advisors, the other person Otto listened to was his wife, Theophanu. Theophanu was now 17 and has probably learned the language and began finding her feet. But to understand the intricate network of personal, military and economic interconnections between the magnates in her husband’s kingdom is not easy. Her personal entourage is probably equally lost at sea. She cannot even rely on support from Constantinople any more where her clan, the Skleros are in open rebellion against the new emperor Basil II.

Compare that to Otto’s  grandfather Henry the Fowler who was friend with everyone, married to a Saxon noblewoman deeply connected to all the major clans in Saxony, readily accessible to his dukes and nobles and happy to take their advice.

Otto’s unpopularity was not lost on king Lothar of France. When the duke of Upper Lothringia also dies[3], he sees the chance and makes a surprise attack on Lothringia. He pushed all the way to Charlemagne’s ancient capital in Aachen[4]. As it happened, the imperial family had literally sat down to dinner when Lothar and his troops arrived. Otto and Theophanu had to run as fast as they could to escape and Lothar took over the palace, grabbed the insignia of imperial power and turned the eagle on the roof from west to east as a sign of the change of times[5].

This was a psychological shock to the system. The emperor running away is another one of those images that are extremely difficult to eradicate, a bit like the dog carrying in Magdeburg. Militarily the whole thing was a nonsense. The king of France had barely the resources to hold on to the little bits of his kingdom not controlled by his overbearing vassals, let alone enough to seriously threaten the emperor.

Otto II had to and did retaliate. He took an army to France burning and pillaging the countryside around Reims, Laon and Paris[6]. Otto’s army camped on the hill of Montmartre outside Paris and shouted Hallelujah at the top of their voices, which for some reason was not frightening enough for the Parisians to open the gates[7].  In the end, he did not manage to capture any of these towns. Moreover, none of the major French vassals joined Otto II as they had done under Otto I reign. Whether that was down to Otto II’s personality and reputation or down to the beginnings of a French national consciousness is subject to an endless debate. Safe to assume it was probably a bit of both. After a couple of months mistreating peasants, Otto II headed back home. Almost home, the French attacked his rear guard and captured the wagons full of plunder[8]. The French celebrated this as a major victory. Lothar kept trying to take advantage of the situation and besieged Cambrai, but a few months later has to sign a peace agreement with Otto II[9] and give up his claim on Lothringia. That peace agreement was signed in the border town of Margut-sur-Chiers, in other words, Lothar does not come to the emperor at his palace, as he did in 965. We are back to the early times of Henry the Fowler when the king of France saw himself as equal to the German ruler. That is a step down from Otto the Great’s reign and confidence in Otto’s rule diminishes further.

Back home in Magdeburg a true Game of Thrones type event takes place. During the royal assembly, a certain Waldo accuses count Gero of Morazenigau of betrayal[10]. The court of leading princes rules that the case should be resolved by single combat. In the fight Waldo receives two severe blows but soldiers on. Once up again, he manages to land a massive blow on Gero’s head. Gero goes down and has to concede. Waldo lays down his weapons and gets a drink of water. The water is not half- way down his throat when he keels over dead. Now we have a problem. Gero lost the fight and is hence proven guilty. However, Waldo died almost instantly after the fight from Gero’s blow  which must mean something. Otto II is in the unfortunate position of having to decide and states that since Gero had conceded whilst Waldo was still alive, Waldo’s claim stands and hence Gero is to be beheaded. Several nobles intervened, including duke Otto of Swabia, but to no avail. Gero was beheaded in the morning. This judgement was one of those which “pleased nobody” and made Otto’s life even harder.

After the humiliation in France Otto’s luck brightened up a little In the spring of 980 his wife Theophanu had delivered him a son, named Otto after three daughters[11].

Otto IIs next move was to go down to Italy. After his father’s death things in Italy in general and in Rome in particular had gone out of hand.

Pope John XIII who had been appointed by Otto the First and compliant in all end everything had passed in 972. The imperial party in Rome then pushed through the election of Benedict VI. Benedict VI lasted just 18 months. Once news came that Otto the Great had died and his son was tied up with his nobles, the Romans rose up. The Romans appointed a new pope, Boniface VII, whose first pious act was to relieve his predecessor from the pains of earthly existence.

Boniface VII’s rule was over even more quickly. After 1 month and 12 days he fled from imperial troops into the Castel Sant Angelo. There he grabbed the papal treasure and fled to Byzantine controlled areas of Southern Italy[12].

The Roman people upon gentle prodding of the imperial spears elected a new Pope, a comparatively virtuous man who took the name Benedict the VII. As this going to get complicated, here is the basic rule – Boniface is bad, Benedict is good.

Good Benedict ruled from 974 to 983, but in 980 he got under severe pressure from the Roman population[13] and it might have been that Boniface, the bad pope, returned[14] and managed to take control of Rome. In March 981, Otto II came down to Rome to bring back pope Benedict (the good one).  Bad Boniface briskly bolted to Byzantium.

Not only did Otto get the Pope he wanted, after long and complex negotiations Otto and his mother Adelheid reconciled[15]. Adelheid was crucial since she had all the connections in Italy. With her support he was able to bring the Italian nobles onto his side for his real grand project.

In 981 Otto II called a royal assembly in Rome where lords, bishops from all over the empire and even the king of Burgundy in person came to pay him respect[16]. He was even called upon to resolve some dispute between king Lothar and one of his major vassals, the last time an emperor would have a say over the affairs of France. It felt a bit like the good old days of Otto the Great. At the assembly plans were hatched for what to do in the autumn campaign season.

Having avoided the summer heat and malaria of Rome by staying in a specially built imperial Pfalz in the Abruzzo Mountains, Otto came back to Rome in the autumn of 981 and mustered his troops for what was his true objective in Italy, the conquest of the south[17].

Bringing both the south and the north of Italy under one rule would end the constant struggles over the papacy as the king/emperor had the Roman warring factions bottled up inside the holy city and thereby make imperial rule much more robust.

For most of the previous century Southern Italy was kept in balance between three main powers, The Lombard dukes who held the territory immediately south and east of Rome, the Byzantines, who held the rest of Southern Italy and the Muslim emirs of Sicily who controlled the island of Sicily.

Otto the Great had managed Southern Italy through a loyal and competent Lombard duke called Pandulf Ironhead. Pandulf had the audacity to die in 781 and, being a Germanic leader had split his inheritance amongst a number of more or less competent sons and nephews. In good old Germanic tradition, these guys wasted no time allying themselves with other local powers and going at each other’s throats.

Within all that fighting, the Byzantines held on by the skin of their teeth occasionally losing Bari and Taranto, their main strongholds to the Muslims. Looks like Southern Italy is quite fragmented and should be an easy pick, right?

Otto II thought so and declared that Southern Italy had come to him as dowry for his wife Theophanu. Most western scholars dismiss this claim, probably correctly. However, there might be a connection to Theophanu. As you may remember from episode 8, Theophanu was a member of the Skleros clan and a niece by marriage of emperor John Tzimiskis. When John Tzimiskis died in 976, her uncle, Bardas Skleros staged an attempt to become emperor alongside or instead the new emperor Basil II. That rebellion ended in a battle in 979, but Bradas Skleros and presumably her father Christopheros Skleros were still alive in exile in Baghdad, plotting their return. There is no evidence of any coordination between the German imperial government and the Skleros family, but it is not far fetched to believe that Otto expected that a domestic civil war in Byzantium would make his conquest of Southern Italy easier. In the end it did not matter much because the Skleros only returned to Byzantium five years later in 987. One thing that may indicate this to be a possibility is that from this moment on Otto calls himself Imperator Romanorum Augustus, that is Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. His father had simply called himself Caesar or Kaiser, without the reference to the Romans. Otto II’s is the same title as the title of a Byzantine emperor, which may be justified if his father or uncle in law had recognised him as co-emperor of the Byzantine empire.

Back to more tangible things. The game plan was to leave Pandolf’s offspring to their own fighting, take over the Byzantine lands and then secure that conquest against the Muslims.

Part one of the campaign went exactly to plan. Otto II assembled the largest army the Ottonian period had ever seen and marched south. He conquered the Byzantine duchy of Salerno and stayed in its capital Taranto until June[18].

As Otto expected, in the spring of 982 the Emir of Sicily brought his army across the straights of Messina to fight the German emperor. When the emir approached the Ottonian encampment near  the small town of Rossano Calabro in the deep south he realised that the emperor’s army was a lot larger than he had bargained for. He turned his troops around and marched as fast as he could towards the straights of Messina with the plan to take ships back home. But he never made it.

As the emir’s troops ran home along the coast, they were spotted by Byzantine merchant ships coming up the coast. They told Otto and Otto’s heavy cavalry began the pursuit[19].  

Somewhere near Capo Colonna, though that is disputed, the Emir realise that he would not make it back in time. He halted the flight and set up in full battle order. Otto’s heavily armoured knights crashed into the emir’s troops and pushed all the way to the centre. The emir’s bodyguard crumbled and the emir was killed. Job done.

No, not done at all. Whilst the German cavalry were busy slaughtering the emir, unbeknownst to them a reserve detachment of about 5’000 Muslim cavalrymen joined the fray. They encircled the fighting Germans and having restricted their room to manoeuvre began systematically massacring Otto’s army[20]. Many senior nobles died including the duke of Benevento, the bishop Henry of Augsburg, the Margrave of Merseburg, the abbot of Fulda and a further 19 counts.

Otto II fled by hailing a Byzantine ship – oh irony of ironies. He convinced the captain of the ship that he had enough and that he wanted to just pick up his wife and the imperial treasury before retiring to Constantinople. The greedy captain pushed his rowing slaves go double time only to find that when his ship arrived back at the town of Rossano, the emperor simply jumped into the sea and swam ashore.

In most reports the defeat is described as catastrophic. Reports of the fallen purple flower of the fatherland, the pride of blond Germans reached as far as the kingdom of Wessex. But when I examined the movements of Otto II after the battle, it did not look like a flight for his life at all. He stayed in Rossana[21], a few miles from the battlefield for a few weeks before moving leisurely back to Salerno and Capua[22], taking care of administrative burdens. He only gets to Rome by December or even March 983, 9 months after the “catastrophe” of Capo Colonna. That suggests the Muslims had returned to Sicily with the body of their fallen leader and the Byzantines had remained unable or unwilling to reconquer Salerno.

In the meantime, Otto II had sent his nephew Otto of Swabia and Bavaria back home to raise fresh troops. He only made it to Lucca where he and his companions died, probably of Malaria[23]. As we said before, Otto II does not have a lot of close relatives, making the loss of Otto of Swabia and Bavaria one of his most important vassals and closest confidants a severe blow.

In order to stabilise the situation Otto called a royal diet in Verona where the senior nobles of Italy and Germany elected his 3-year-old son Otto III as king[24]. This election was the only election of a future Roman emperor to have taken place on Italian soil. But what is even more striking is that the child king was elected by both German and Italian nobles. Not only that, but when he sets off to be crowned king in Aachen, he is accompanied by both the archbishop Willigis of Mainz as the highest-ranking churchman in Germany and the Archbishop of Ravenna as the primate of the Italian church.

Up until then the Kings of East Francia were elected exclusively by German magnates and crowned exclusively by German archbishops, whilst the Kings of Italy were elected by Italian nobles and crowned by Italian archbishops[25]. Otto III’s election and later coronation is an attempt to merge the German and the Italian part of the Ottonian realm into one Reich. It is another step in the direction of a rebirth of a pan-European political entity that is a key feature of the later Ottonians.

Apart from the election of little Otto III, the assembly of Verona was extremely productive. The inheritance of Otto of Swabia and Bavaria was redistributed, again back to old aristocratic clans, the Konradiner in Swabia and the Liutpoldinger in Bavaria. The latter is particularly noteworthy, as the lucky winner of the duchy of Bavaria is none other than Henry of Carinthia, one of the rebellious three Henries. I actually made a mistake in the last episode when I said this henry would be the one to die in the service of the emperor, whilst the one who actually died was Henry Bishop of Augsburg. You see, you are not the only one struggling with an excess of Henries in this narrative.

The other thing of note is that Otto invests Adalbert with the bishopric of Prague. Adalbert will appear again in our story a few episodes down the line, but for now let me just say that he would die as a missionary to the Pruzzi, the Prussians making their debut on the global stage in time honoured bloody fashion. He would also become one of the national saints of Poland.

And then there is the dispute with the Venetians who have been subjected to what I think is the first case of trade sanctions since the ancient Roman empire[26]. Since it was impossible to conquer Venice without a fleet and the empire had no fleet, they had begun to act independently from the imperial government in Pavia. A trade embargo was the only way to enforce control, however, even though some agreements were signed in Verona, these did not stick and Venice kept pushing for independence.

One last thing about Verona, they also debated another campaign against Muslim Sicily[27], which again suggests the war had not been lost.

But while Otto dreamt of retribution and little Otto III travelled north to Aachen for his coronation an actual catastrophe befell the dynasties homeland, Saxony.

Since I have been harping on about it so many times, you may remember that Otto the Great’s two famous generals, Hermann Billung and Margrave Gero had pushed the boundaries of the duchy decisively east by subjugating and converting the Slavs who lived east of the Elbe River. Most of that Christianisation involved more cold steel than the lord’s prayer.

In 983 the Slavs had enough of forced baptisms and wanton destruction of their pagan shrines and rebelled. The rebellion ran like wildfire. The Abodrites in the north had not forgotten the slaughter of the 700 in 955 and burned the city of Hamburg (again). The Liutzen and Heveller flattened the hated cathedrals and towns of Brandenburg and Havelberg.

The leaders of the border counties and the bishops finally gather troops to stop the flood of raging pagans. Battle is joined near Stendal and the Slavs are allegedly beaten comprehensively. I say allegedly because after the battle the Saxon troops return behind the Elbe River and effectively abandon the Slavic lands to their people who continued in their pagan beliefs. In my book that means the Slavs have won.

Instead of blaming the rebellion on the brutal suppression of Slavic religion and culture, the contemporaries laid the blame straight at Otto II’s feet. It was seen as a punishment for his sins.

And that sin was having suppressed the bishopric of Merseburg in eastern Saxony in 982. Merseburg was one of the bishoprics founded by his father Otto the Great. His bishop was Giselher, a member of the royal chapel and one of Otto’s closest advisers. Merseburg was one of the smaller and less prestigious bishoprics, which is why Giselher got very excited when the much larger and more prosperous archbishopric of Magdeburg became vacant during Otto IIs reign. He convinced Otto II to make him archbishop of Magdeburg. There was one small problem though. According to canon law in the 10th century, a bishop was forever attached to his bishopric and could not move up the food chain. Therefore the decision was taken to suppress the bishopric of Merseburg on a technicality which would make Giselher free to become archbishop of Magdeburg.  Suppressing a bishopric is not only a complicated thing to do under church law, in the eyes of the 10th century it is also close to sacrilege. Therefore, when the Saxons try to find a reason for the Slav rebellion they conclude that it could not possibly have been the indiscriminate slaughter of pagans and enslavement of wives and children, but quite obviously the suppression of the bishopric of Merseburg, which in turn was Otto’s fault.

Otto II hears about the Slav rebellion in Rome where he is waiting for new troops. These troops never came as all resources had now to be moved to the defence of the eastern border.

With his kingdom shrunk and under threat, his Italian policy stalled and his standing as a holy roman emperor trashed, Otto had come to the end of the road. On December 7th, 983 Otto II died of malaria in Rome. He is buried in St. Peter in Rome, the only medieval emperor to be buried in the holly city.

Otto II has been judged very harshly by his contemporaries and history, if they take any notice of him at all. In preparation of this episode, I could not find any biography of Otto II at all. There are biographies of Otto the Great, Theophanu and Otto III galore, but Otto II none. That is quite odd.

Otto II mustered one of the greatest armies the Ottonian dynasty ever put into the field in an attempt to conquer Southern Italy which, if successful, would have fundamentally changed the history of the empire.  An empire that included both Northern and Southern Italy would have been able to control the papacy much more effectively. A papacy under control of the emperor would have been forced to accept the imperial Church system in perpetuity making it easier for the future emperors to form a coherent state.

And it wasn’t some obvious military error that led to his defeat, just bad luck. If Otto II had only had a 10th of the luck his father had, he would have succeeded in this endeavour.

It is also not fair to blame the Slav rebellion on Otto II. The rebellion was very much the result of his father’s policy of Christian conversion by fire and sword. Again, it was bad luck the rebellion broke out during his reign and not before or afterwards.

We may talk about bad luck, but people in the 10th century did not believe in luck, they believed in all things being ordained by God. That included even the smallest things like a stubbed toe or a late flowering of vines. When all and everything is controlled by God, then losing a battle is a decision by the lord against the ruler. The string of misfortunes Otto II endured were not bad luck but a judgement by the lord against him. If the lord was not on his side, then he cannot be the ruler by the grace of God. And why did God remove his grace from the properly anointed king? In the eyes of the 10th century that was obvious, it was the unforgiveable sin of suppressing the bishopric of Merseburg,

Though later historians did not think along those lines, they seem to have absorbed the general notion that Otto II was somehow not quite right as a ruler. His failings really come down to his inability to relate to his subjects on a personal level. He always appeared to be separate from his magnates, be it on account of his better education, his glamorous wife or his choice of advisors. But that matters more than anything else in a political structure that is entirely built upon personal relationships. Therefore, Otto II would still have had a hard time had he beaten the Emir of Sicily and if the Slavs had not rebelled.

Next week Otto III will arrive in Aachen and be crowned, just a day before the news arrive that his father is dead. That drops the German kingdom into chaos as the boy king’s closest male relative Henry the Quarrelsome is instantly released and his mother fight over the guardianship and by extension the control over the kingdom.  The mathematically inclined amongst you may now expect the reign of Otto III will start with an epic fight between 9 Ottos and 9 Henries. Nope, history is neither linear nor exponential. This time is just one Henry against three ladies, a geek and a 3 year old – I am taking bets.

I hope you will join as again for an action-packed episode.

And if you enjoyed this episode, why don’t you follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify and from then on you will get every new episode fresh into your inbox, every week.

[1]RI II,2 n. 742a

[2] RI, II, 2n, 771b

[3] RI, II,2n 769c

[4] RI, II,2n 770a

[5] Thietmar III,8

[6] RI, II,2n 771d

[7] Schneidmueller, Weinfurter, Die deutschen Herrscher des Mittelalters, p.67

[8] RI, II, 2n, 771d

[9] RI, II, 2n. 811a

[10] Thietmar III, 9

[11] RI, II 2n, 815a

[12] John Julius Norwich, the Pope, p.83

[13] Catholic Encyclopaedia: Benedict VII

[14] Norwich, p.83

[15] RI II, 2n, 833a

[16] RI II 2n, 840a

[17] RI, II 2n, 856c{a}

[18] RI II 2n,871

[19] Barkowski, Robert F. (2015). Crotone 982 (in Polish). Warszawa: Bellona. ISBN 978-83-11-13732-5.

[20] Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056. New York: Longman, 1991.

[21] RI II 2n, 876

[22] RI II 2n, 877-890

[23] RI II 2n, 884a

[24] RI II 2n, 898b

[25]

[26] RI II 2n, 899-901

[27] RI II 2n, 902a

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In 982 the unlucky emperor Otto II loses a battle in Southern Italy, which triggers an uprising of the pagan Slavs east of the Elbe River giving Poland enough wiggle room to plough its own furrow.

When Otto II takes over from his father in 973 the Ottonian dynasty is at its peak. Otto I had defeated his domestic enemies, the Magyars and expanded aggressively east of the Elbe River.  He was crowned emperor in 962 and Byzantium had sent a “princess” for his son to marry.

Like many sons of successful fathers, Otto II tried to best his old man. Otto I had attempted to take Bari, the main base of Byzantine power in Italy. His son wanted to complete the task. And then go after the ultimate prize, the rich, Muslim held island of Sicily.

Otto II assembled the largest army Europe in this period had seen and marched south. He conquered the Byzantine duchy of Puglia and stayed in Taranto until June 982. As Otto expected, the Emir of Sicily brought his army across the straights of Messina to fight the northerners.

As the emir approached the Ottonian encampment near Rossano Calabro in the deep south he realised that the emperor’s army was a lot larger than he had bargained for. He turned his army around and marched at speed towards Messina to take ships home. He never made it.

As the emir’s troops ran home along the coast, they were spotted by Byzantine merchant ships coming up the coast. They told Otto and Otto’s heavy cavalry began the pursuit.  Somewhere near Capo Colonna (or Stilo) the Emir halted the flight and set up in full battle order.

Otto’s heavily armoured knights crashed into the emir’s troops and pushed all the way to the centre. The emir’s bodyguard crumbled, and the emir was killed. Job done.

No, not done at all. Whilst the German cavalry were busy slaughtering the emir, unbeknownst to them a reserve detachment of about 5,000 Muslim cavalrymen joined the fray. They encircled the fighting Germans and having restricted their room to manoeuvre, massacred them.

Many senior nobles died including the duke of Benevento, the bishop Henry of Augsburg, the Margrave of Merseburg, the abbot of Fulda and a further 19 counts. Otto II fled by hailing a Byzantine ship – oh irony of ironies.

He convinced the captain that he had enough and was just picking up the imperial treasury to retire on. The greedy captain pushed his rowing slaves go double time only to find that when they arrived back at Rossano, the emperor simply jumped into the sea and swam ashore.

The impact was felt al throughout Europe. Though the defeat was not catastrophic, the failure of Ottonian arms gave heart to the Slavs east of the Elbe who had been brutally subjugated and forcibly converted.

The ensuing Slav revolt pushed the borders of the empire back to the Elbe River. As a consequence, the empire needed the help of the dukes of Poland to contain the fallout, allowing this polity to ultimately become an independent state, unlike Bohemia/Czech Republic. 

In Southern Italy the Byzantines, Lombard dukes and Muslim Emirs kept squabbling until the Normans unified the territory. The Southern Normans were crucial support for the papacy in the Investiture Conflict which weakened the empire. More on this really almost completely forgotten battle is available on episode 10 of the History of the Germans Podcast available on all major podcasting platforms. 

https://pod.fo/e/162dc5

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#Onthisday, August 23rd, 1268 Konradin, last of the imperial Hohenstaufen dynasty, lost the battle of Tagliacozzo. Konradin had made a desperate attempt to regain his inheritance as king of Sicily. Sicily was at the time one of the richest and best organised kingdoms in Europe, comprising not just the island of Sicily but all of Southern Italy up to Rome.

The popes had tried to get rid of the Hohenstaufens for years, offering the kingdom of Sicily to whoever was willing and able to oust them. King Henry III of England had initially shown interest but was rebuffed by parliament, adding to his woes that would lead to the Second Barons War.

After Henry III, the popes offered Sicily to Charles of Anjou, younger son of King Louis VIII of France. Once terms were agreed, Pope Urban IV called a crusade against Konradin’s uncle Manfred who had ruled Sicily (nominally) on his behalf. Charles defeated Manfred in the battle of Benevento in 1266 and took control of the kingdom.

Konradin appeared in Southern Italy in 1268 with an army raised by Ghibelline (=pro-imperial) Italian cities, a contingent of Austrian soldiers and many Sicilian nobles who struggled under the harsh Angevin rule. The battle was brief but bloody. Almost the entire army perishes, and Charles of Anjou has the survivors executed.

On October 29th, 1268, Konradin, just 16 years old, is beheaded on the main square in Naples together with his friend Frederick of Baden. This marks the end not just of the family of Frederick Barbarossa, it is also the end of imperial meddling in Italian affairs. Nominally Northern Italy remains part of what now will be called the Holy Roman Empire, but few emperors go to Italy, and if they do, it is in a private capacity.

Charles was also not able to enjoy his new kingdom for long. In 1282 the inhabitants of Sicily rose up and murdered thousands of their French oppressors in an event known as the Sicilian Vespers. The king of Aragon came to the rebels aid (or may have even instigated the event himself). Charles lost control of the island and died a few years later a broken man.

Konradin has been romanticised in German history as “the last Staufer”, young and “beautiful as Absalom” whose tragic demise closes the heroic medieval history of the Empire. Modern historians like Peter H. Wilson have been questioning whether there was as much of a structural break between the Staufer and their successors.

We will see what we make of the death of Konradin when we get to it in the History of the Germans Podcast – available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify etc. and on my website historyofthgermans